The Weekly Sift

The government runs out of money again on October 1. That gives the Democratic minorities in Congress some rare leverage. What should they do with it?

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The 2026 fiscal year starts in less than a month, and nobody yet knows what the FY2026 federal budget will have in it.

In the House, Republicans currently hold a 219-212 majority, so they can pass whatever budget they want if they have fewer than four defectors. In the Senate they have a 53-47 majority, but they need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. So Democrats have leverage in the House only if the Republicans can’t stay unified, but Republicans need seven Democratic votes in the Senate unless they’re willing to nuke the filibuster. (Don’t count that out. Trump will almost certainly ask for it before conceding anything he cares about.)

This raises two questions: Are Democrats willing to shut down the government if Republicans don’t negotiate with them in good faith? And if they are willing to take such a stand, what concessions should they ask for?

Ezra Klein discussed the first question in yesterday’s NYT. He notes that Democrats faced a similar decision in March when the previous continuing resolution ran out. Hakeem Jeffries in the House wanted to go for a shutdown, but Chuck Schumer in the Senate didn’t. Schumer won out, and Democrats got nothing for their cooperation.

This looked really bad at the time, and demoralized Democrats around the country. But Klein notes that in the moment it actually was a close call. Schumer argued:

• The courts were already reining in Trump’s excesses.
• Markets were reeling from Trump’s tariff announcements; a shutdown would just give him a chance to blame Democrats for the economic chaos.
• A shutdown would help DOGE eliminate government jobs and departments.

In addition, Klein notes that the Democrats weren’t ready for that battle. They hadn’t agreed on a message worth shutting down the government for.

But now, he claims, none of those arguments hold. The Supreme Court hasn’t held the line, markets have stabilized without a tariff-fueled economic catastrophe, and Elon Musk is gone.

Even more, Trump’s autocratic project is up and running now.

I want to be very clear about what I am saying here. Donald Trump is corrupting the government — he is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power. He is corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth. This is what Trump is doing to the government. This is what Democrats cannot fund. This is what they have to try to stop.

… The case for a shutdown is this: A shutdown is an attentional event. It’s an effort to turn the diffuse crisis of Trump’s corrupting of the government into an acute crisis that the media, that the public, will actually pay attention to.

So when they get public attention, what exactly should Democrats demand? Jen Rubin makes these five suggestions:

• Defend Congress’ power of the purse by undoing FY2025’s rescissions.
• Reverse the Medicaid cuts that take effect after the 2026 elections.
• Restrictions on DHS’ most outrageous practices: No rendition to third countries. No masks. Reports on how many people without criminal records are being rounded up.
• New sanctions to pressure Russia into peace talks.
• Ban stock trading for members of Congress, as well as the president and vice president.

The key test for demands is that Republicans should sound ridiculous defending what the Democrats want to put a stop to. (This is a lesson taught by the Epstein files.) Do Republicans want to shut the government down to defend Trump’s right to trade stocks? They should go right ahead.

If I had to sum up in one word the reason Democrats should give for their stand, it would be “corruption”. I think both Rubin and Klein would agree with that, and it’s also in line with what the Epstein phenomenon should be teaching Democrats.

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BTW: A simple case in point about how Trump is using his power to gain wealth:

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. will host next year’s Group of 20 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, arguing it was “the best location” for the high-stakes international gathering but insisting his family’s business “will not make any money on it.”

Of course it won’t. Trump would never lie about something like that, and no doubt his independent Justice Department would watch like a hawk to make sure nothing corrupt happened.